Cooper's Hawk

 The cooper's hawk is medium sized hawk that is found through much of North America. It is in the Genus Accipiter. Accipiter hawks have proportionally shorter wings and a longer tail then Hawks in the Genus Buteo. Acciptier are built more for maneuverability then for soaring. Most Accipiters are bird hunters. Their short wings let them maneuver through trees and bushes while chasing smaller birds. Their long tail acts like a rudder.

The Cooper's hawk population here in the Twin Cities has been growing over the past 10 years or so. Last year they were the species that was emitted the most into the clinic at The Raptor Center. The most accepted theory about their increase in population is the increase of people feeding birds at feeders. Bird feeders are like a buffet for the Cooper's Hawk. This food source is especially important during the winter. Most birds do not migrate because of cold. They migrate because of a lack of food during the cold winter. As there are more bird feeders out, there is more food available during the winter. So more song birds stick around instead of heading south. The more song birds that stick around over the winter the more food available to the Cooper's hawk. So more Coops hang around during the winter instead of heading south.   

Accipiters

Hawks are divided into two separate genus, Buteo and Accipiter. The difference in the two genus is in their anatomy. Buteos posses an opening in the front of their coracoid shoulder bone. This opening is called a procoracoid foramen. Accipiters lack this opening. However this difference is not something that you can use to distinguish between the genus' when you are out in the field watching birds.
So here are some tips to help you identify Accipiters when you are out bird watching. Accipiters generally prey on other birds so they have several adaptations that help them to catch their food. First off they have short wings and a long tail which helps them to be more maneuverable. They also have long legs, which are good for sticking into bushes to catch a hiding bird, and long toes, similar to those of falcons, so that they can wrap them around a bird in mid flight. Another thing that can sometimes help ID an Accipiter is the color of their eyes. Accipiters have brightly colored eyes. They start out bright yellow when it is a first year bird, turn orange in the second year and red by the third year. This is a good way to tell the age of some of the younger birds. Here in Minnesota we can see three different species of Accipiters. The smallest is the sharp-shinned hawk, first picture. Sharpies are forest hunters that often ambush their prey from a hidden perch. This sharpie was photographed migrating over Hawk Ridge. The second photo is of a Cooper's hawk. Coop's are mid sized Accipiters whose population seems to be on the rise in cities where they like to hunt at bird feeders. The largest of the Accipiters that we see in Minnesota is the northern goshawk. These birds migrate down from Canada, where they breed, and spend the winter in the southern part of the state. Out of the three Accipiter species that we see this is the only one with a diet that includes a substantial amount of mammal included with birds as prey. The northern goshawk is circumpolar so they are also found in northern Europe and Asia. This one was banded and photographed at Hawk Ridge.

Hawk Weekend

This weekend was Hawk Weekend, which is the big celebration up at Hawk Ridge. So I spent most of my time volunteering up at the ridge or driving to and from Duluth. All in all it was almost 24 hours between the two days which made for a long, but very fun weekend.

Both days started out foggy in the morning but cleared up and got sunny and warm as the days progressed. I decided not to bring my big glass with because it gets heavy carrying it around all day and besides it can get in way when I am volunteering so I just carried around the 100 to 400 both days. So with out the big glass I did not do much in the way of flight shots so it was a good thing that the banding stations where hopping both days. We had 30 adopted birds on Saturday and 35 on Sunday, which is good because the adoptions are the main way that the HRBO pays for all of the programs. Most of the adopted birds where either merlin falcons, like the one in the first pic, or sharp-shinned hawks like the one above.

Once in a while we did get something different from the banding stations, like this mature sharp-shinned hawk that had a very unique eye. If you look carefully you notice that both eyes do not look the same. The right eye is the way that mature sharp-shinned hawk eyes are supposed to look. The left eye appears to have an extra large pupil. The bird was checked and it seemed to be able to see out of the eye so it was banded and released.

Another interesting bird was a coopers hawk. Coopers hawks are also accipiters, like sharp-shinned hawks only larger. Coopers hawks are not uncommon in Minnesota, we have a population that is healthy down in the Twin Cities, but Duluth is at the northern portion of their range so they are not as common up at hawk ridge, only 33 have been counted so far this season compared to 4212 sharp-shinned hawks. We did have a coop banded and adopted each day this weekend.

Red-tailed hawks are very common in Minnesota, as well as most of North America, but they don't usually begin migrating past Hawk Ridge until later in the season. However it is common for immature birds to begin migrating before the adults so we have counted a couple hundred of them so far this season. This was the first one that has been banded when I have been around so far this year.

We did see a number of American kestrels fly by this weekend also. Kestrels used to be much more common but their numbers appear to be on the decline, at least in my area. The numbers of kestrels counted each season up at Hawk Ridge has been decreasing and the number of kestrels admitted to The Raptor Center has also been decreasing. That is why the counting and banding work that is done by the Hawk Ridge Bird Observatory is so important. The statistical data that they have collected can let us identify trends, like the one that we are currently seeing with the kestrels, and then look for reasons and solutions before all of the kestrels are gone.

That is why the Membership and Adopt a Raptor programs at Hawk Ridge are so vital because with out the funds the important research that is being done up at Hawk Ridge may end and then where will we be? Besides where else can you have a precious memory like the one above!

Birding Close to Home.

I have been making a concerted effort to try and do more birding closer to home lately. This is partly to help the environment and partly to help my wallet. So far this has not been a problem since the warblers are migrating through the area and giving all of us birders plenty to look at and photograph. One place that I have been spending some more time at this year has been Dodge Nature Center. I visited Dodge on the first Saturday in May and had a pretty good day.
One thing that I have been seeing more of this year are female red-winged blackbirds. They have always been around in years past but the females typically are harder to spot. That is because they usually spend most of their time down in the reeds where their coloration helps to camouflage them. This year though it seems like I am seeing more of them out in the open. I am not sure why this is. Maybe the female red-winged blackbirds are sick of sitting in the shadows and want their turn in the light, they see a woman running for president this year and have decided that this is their year.

Some birds, like northern cardinals, are pretty common around here all year long, but that does not mean that if a cardinal gives me a great pose that I will not stop to take its pic.
White-breasted nuthatch are another year round resident.
Yellow-rumped warbles are now extremely common.
Palm warblers are fairly numerous right now also. They are usually the ones hoping around on the ground.
You can also tell the palm warblers by their typical little tail bopping.

The common yellowthroat is one of nine species of yellowthroats. They range through out the US and Canada, except the far north, during the summer and migrate to Mexico during the winter.
This photo is not great but it is not usually that easy to get a picture of a sora so I was happy just to get a recognizable photo. The sora is a member of the rail family. It lives in the cattails in fresh water mashes and is more usually heard then it is seen.
On the other hand wild turkeys have become quite plentiful around here. Each evening they can be seen in fields through out most of the state.
A pleasant surprise on this evening was spotting a coopers hawk out on the prowl. I was able to get a couple of shots as it flew over head.
Coopers hawks are part of the accipiter family of hawks. Accipiters have rounded wings just like other hawks, buteos, do but the wings are shorter and their tails are longer. This gives them more maneuverability when they fly which they need since much of their diet consists of small birds. The other accipiters that are native to North America would be the sharp-shinned hawk and the goshawk.

The birds were not the only thing out on that evening. Reptiles, like these painted turtles, are cold blooded and can not regulate their body temperature on there own. That is why you can often see them out sunning themselves on nice days.
As dusk approached the white-tailed deer began to come out. Minnesota has an over abundance of white-tailed deer. This is due to loss of natural predators like timber wolves and bear. Hunting helps to curve some of the over population. Even though I have never hunted and I am not a very big fan of hunting, it is more merciful to put some deer down quick through hunting then to allow them to starve to death in the winter because there is not enough food to support the large population. However many of the deer have gotten smart and live inside the city limits where hunting is not allowed.

Wabasha CBC

December 30th was the Wabasha CBC and my last CBC for 2007. For this count I was partnered with Laura Coble, who was the coordinator for the RedWing CBC that I participated in earlier in the month, and we were assigned an area on the south east side of the CBC circle. We started our count in the small town of Kellog, just south of Wabasha. We toured the town checking out all or the feeders that we could find and counting the passerines and woodpeckers that we found. We saw juncos, chickadees, house and tree sparrows, gold finch, house finch, cardinals, blue jays, white-breasted nuthatch, downie, hairy and red-bellied woodpeckers and even a lone pine siskin.

On the south side of town we came to a feeder stand that appeared to only have black squirrels feeding at it. I thought that it was strange since the feeders appeared well stock and there was adequate cover. Then a larger bird took off from down low and landed in a tree above the feeder.

It was a sharp-shinned hawk and it was looking for breakfast. We stopped to watch the bird and so that I could take some pics. After about 30 seconds of looking around the bird hunched over and prepared to take off. I thought that he was going to take off and leave but to my surprise he went down towards a small bush. From out of the bush a small dark bird took off, I am pretty sure that it was a junco but it really happened fast so I can not be 100% sure, but he was too late. The sharpie smacked into the passerine, that was bolting for its life, and knocked it into the snow. The sharpie followed quickly behind and captured the bird with its talons down under the snow.
If you look carefully at the picture above you can see a wing in the snow by the sharpies leg. He stood on the junco for about half a minute, just long enough to squeeze the life out of it, and then took his prize and flew off to the safety of some neighboring pine trees where he could eat in privacy.

After that excitement we headed out of town to investigate the rest of our area. In a rural area, not far out of town, we spotted a tree where a few mourning doves had perched.
Later in the day we found a pretty good size flock of mourning doves. We also saw a couple of northern shrikes as well as quite a few raptors including three bald eagles, one rough legged hawk, and about 10 redtail hawks.This immature redtail was fairly tolerant of people and let us get pretty close to take some pics. We all met in Kellog around lunch time to check in and then went back out to check some rural areas, a golf course, part of the Mississippi Valley National Fish and Wildlife refuge, and some land owned by the Nature Conservancy. It was starting to get dark and we had covered our territory so we decided to head back and take a trip through Kellog again on our way back. Since we had already counted Kellog pretty well we decided not to count anything new unless it was something that we had not seen in town on our first trip through. We added two more birds both of the same species. First was this adult coopers hawk that we spotted in a tree.

He flew before I could get a real good pic, with out so many sticks in the way, and we could not find where he went to. So we continued back to a feeder stand that where we had seen a lot of birds and we found an immature coopers hawk hunting there.At first I only got a couple of shots of his back before he flew but we did relocate him before we left town and I got my shots. We did pretty good for raptors that day but the CBC as a whole counted over 50 eagles as well as quite a few rough legged and red-tailed hawks and one snowy owl.